Google announced today the available of many out of copyright "classic books" for download. These writings include the works of Dickens, Shakespeare, Joyce, and Dante. With Google Book Search they are now just a click away, and best of all they are all free. Google has been working in partnership with the University of Michigan, Standford University, Oxford University and the New York Public library in this endeavor, which began in late 2004. Basically, they are scanning all of these books page by page to make the content searchable. Just imagine the possiblilites of being able to search thousands if not millions of books just by typing in a word or phrase! I have a feeling that kids these days will have a much easier time with books reports, to say the least. Many copyrighted books are also available to search, but Google only displays a small sample of text of these copyrighted books. Google just got one large step closer to organizing the world's information with this mind-blowing project. I know you all you bookworms will certainly love this one! What do you think of this project, and Google's stance on copyrighted materials?

Google today highlighted it's offering of a suite of personal productivity applications just for business called "Google Apps For Your Domain". Basically, what Google is doing is integrating it's e-mail, calendar, instant messages, web site creation (pagecreator) and Internet phone (google talk) into a bundle designed for specifically for small businesses. This will be a free service that Google offers to small businesses that sign up for the program. Each individual in the company will be able to have their own seperate account. Google is also expected to release a premium fee based service later on in the year for larger organizations. They had released a similar service just for it's e-mail service called "Gmail For Your Domain" back in February of this year. While Apps for your domain is impressive, the real story here will be when Google implements their Writely program and spreadsheet application in this "Google Apps".

Yesterday, Google released it's newly acquired program Writely to everyone in the world. Writely is a word processing program that was gobbled up by Google in March of this year. Writely is no Mircosoft Word though, it is a completly web-based program that allows users to store, compose, and even share their documents with others on the net if they so choose. This seems to be another push towards storing even more info online for Google. You can now access your documents from any computer in the word and edit in real-time. This would even work well in a business sense, as employees can colaborate on the same document from different parts of the world. Try it out, like most things from Google it's free so you have nothing to lose. Let me know what you think of Google's Writely below in comments.

Google anounced today that it has formed a strategic partnership with China.com. Google will help China.com by providing it with search engine technology. Google and China.com will also be sharing their branding and advertising power. This seems to be just another part of the big push into China for Google, and other Internet companies like Yahoo and Mircosoft. Many experts believe that the Internet advertising market in China is largely untapped. This could be a big win for both Google and China.com. What is your take?

Google again proved why it is the top Internet search provider. This time it was official from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Google continued to reign supreme as Yahoo dropped 4 points. The University of Michigan helped to conduct this annual survey by the ACSI. Google scored a 81 out of 100 while Yahoo scored a 76. MSN and AOL both scored a 74. This is the fifth year in a row that Google has lead all e-businesses in customer satisfaction. How would you rate them on a scale of 100?

Google today announced that it will offer a free printable coupon service for small business owner's. What do you think? Will this bring more local smaller companies to the net? They even offered this to business's that do not have a website, which could really drive up interest in this product. This service will be intergrated into the Google local maps listings. The listings will now show an icon for the coupons beside it. A business can even design it's own coupon through Google. Google could provide a much needed boost to many local economies. They also made a partnership with valpak, which mails a monthly envelope full of coupons to just about every residence in the USA. Could be a huge upside for both companies.

Google and MySpace together at last. What do you think is $900 million too much to pay for Myspace and the other News Corp sites. Personally, I think they well get a huge return on their investment with the booming popularity of MySpace. MySpace has now become the most popular site on the web, overtaking Yahoo just last month! Just imagine how many searches are made on MySpace in just one day. Not only that, but I am sure Google will make it easier to implement Google Adsense into the MySpace pages to generate revenue for the individual user. Yet another reason Google has such a bright future and is continuing to pull away from the rest of the pack. What do you think of this deal?

Now that we have discussed Adsense, lets flip the coin and take a look at the advertiser's side through Adwords, Google Analytics and Google Checkout. First of all, let me give you an overview of Google adwords. The easiest way is simply to see it in action with your own eyes. First, open up a google search and type in whatever you like, for instance "computers". Google automatically brings up pages sorted by relevancy in the middle, and the sponsored links on the right side of the screen. We are concentrating on the sponsored links as this is directly related to adwords. Here's how it works, a company that would sell "computers", bids on these keywords in order to have them show up on the right side of the search window. They would also probably have bids on such words as "hardware", "software", "monitors" and any other relevant term that they might sell. So here is the beauty of it, not only can you bid on these keywords, but you can also choose exactly what you are willing to spend on advertising per day, and where you want these ads to show up in different parts of the of your country or even the world. For instance, if you were a small business out of Detroit, your ad could only show up in Michigan, or even just around the Detroit area. Then, every time a potential customer clicks on your sponsored ad, you can track it through Google Analytics down to what city your potential customer clicked on, how long they spent on the site, and what depth they looked into your site. There are so many options that I have not even come close to mastering this "art". Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google. Just do a search for Google Analytics. After you sign up just add your website address, and Google will write a piece of html that you simply paste into your page at the bottom before the "body". Once this code is in check the status and you should be up and running. The rest is all taken care of by Google. They collect the stats from users that enter your site and put them in a variety of customizable reports. Trust me you will love Google Analytics! Feel free to ask questions or leave a comment below.

Adsense is still in it's infancy for me, but I can all ready see why it has become so wildly popular. Simply put, Google produces a piece of html (the guts that make your website work), that you paste directly into your webpage right where you would like the ads to appear. They give you several different formats to choose from, for instance vertical, horizontal or square. Google also gives you the option to choose text ads, image ads, local business ads, video ads, or any variation of the like. Then, once the adsense code is in your website, Google automatically scans the text on your site, and almost immediately you start seeing ads that are relevant to your site's content. So now for example, if your site is all about plants you will see ads for flowers, seeds, and the like. They even have an option to report if ads from your competitors are showing on your site. Not only is it a free sign-up for adsense, but they also offer two mediums in which you can use it in, as usual for free. One is blogger, and the other is Google Pages. All you need to do is create relevant content that attracts web traffic, and soon you will be throwing pennies in the jar at no cost to you except the time and inclination to create the quality sites. So, what are you waiting get started today? Or, whenever you feel like making some extra cash in your pocket. Leave me a comment below if you like....

Isn't it just amazing that traditional advertising still receives the kind of market share that it does. I mean how can a company even track how effective their advertising really is on mediums like TV and radio? Just because I see an ad for a Dell computer on the TV over and over and over again doesn't mean that I need a computer, does it? I suppose their plan is to pump it into your head until you eventually link computers with Dell instinctively, a lot like "brain washing". Nowadays, people are obviously very annoyed with TV and radio advertising, otherwise things like TiVo's, DVRs, Siri and XM wouldn't be so popular. Amazing that people will actually pay money to avoid having ads shoved in their faces. This is why there is such a giant push towards Internet advertising. People want, and need targeted advertising to help cut costs. If they are searching for a new computer it's because they want or need a new computer, not because Dell told them to go out and get it this second. Plus, the company can easily track this advertising directly through Google Analytics to the purchase in some cases. Instead of the traditional way of advertising, which is throw money at it and hope something sticks. Just wait until the local advertising really catches on the local web. Then we will really see just how big the market is for Internet advertising. It will essentially give more leverage to the little guy as it levels the playing field. Maybe someday when you search for computers in Detroit it will come up Discount Computer and not a big world wide corporate like Dell. I don't think this is very far off. How about you? Leave your comments below.

Just today Google updated two of it's most successful products Picasa and Analytics. Google's Picasa has been upgraded to make it easier for people share photos online with the push of a button. The newest version of Picasa has created a web album feature that you can share out to as many people as you want. All that you have to do is hit the web album button on bottom on the screan and start sharing. I think this could be one of the best features yet, as it will allow family and friends to share pictures from across the globe even easier.

Google Analytics also got an upgrade of sorts as the number of website profiles that a user can have jumped from 10 to 50. Another great leap for Analytics, making it even easier for the webmaster to tracking their traffic. Best of all, both of these products are still free, I wonder how long that will last?

This blog will be used to find different ways to use the power of Google. From Google Analytics, to Adwords to Google Adsense to Google Webstats to Google Pages Creator, to Google Gadgets, to Google Comment and whatever else is released to the public. Please comment on what aspects of Google YOU think we should discuss and we will publish articles regarding your questions.